Psychological Safety of Women on Campus: A Collaborative Approach

by Lynn Butler-Kisber

Recently it has been acknowledged that women experi ence and evaluate their
space differently from men and that ethnicity, race, class, age, ability and
sexuality all have a direct bearing on how we experience our environments
(METRAC, 1991). Women have begun to articulate the many dimensions of settings
which merit scrutiny and change in order to avoid the considerable, and often
unconscious, en ergy that is expended when our surroundings are physically
and/or psychologically uncomfortable. Women's groups on campuses across the
country are challenging institutions to study policies, practices, services,
and physical designs which are prejudicial to women. This paper describes a
two-year safety audit project at McGill University. Its success depended on a
collaborative effort by students, staff, and administrators.

A safety audit is a close evaluation of the physical environment for safety
factors. It is an educational tool and an action plan.... The audit looks at
the environmcnt--at how a space is put together and how it enhances or
reinforces a sense of safety... The goal of safety audits is to improve the
physical environment in ways that reduce the opportunities for sexual
harassment or sexual assaults and to make the environment more comfortable and
accessible to all ... The safcty audit process validates women's experience of
the environment by acknowledging that women are the experts of their
experience. (Women's campus safety audit guide, METRAC/COU)

Included in this description are the nature of the process, the difficulties,
the results to date, and some future directions which merit consideration.

The mini-audit

McGill University in Montreal is a large, decentralized institution in the
heart of the city with approximately 21,000 full-time day students. An
additional 10,000 evening students are part of the Centre for Continuing
Education. Fifty two percent of the 14,000 undergraduates are women.

In March 1992, the Advisory Committee on Women Students' Issues initiated and
conducted a mini safety audit in and around several buildings on the McGill
campus. The composition of the group included the students, professors, and
staff on the Advisory Committee, the Dean of a large faculty, and the Director
of Physical Resources as well as a representative from METRAC, Toronto (Metro
Action Committee on Public Violence against Women and Children). The impetus
for the audit came from a tragic and violent shooting of 14 women at Ecole
Polytechnique (a sister institution), a campus rape, and a general perception
that assaults against women were increasing both in and around the University.
The mini-audit was predicated on the notion that:

... every possible avenue must be examined in order to avoid all incidents
involving safety on campus and... there is a responsibility to deal with the
PERCEIVED physical and psychological safety needs of women in the McGill
community.... to increase the comfort level of women, and consequently
everyone, particularly after dark and during silent hours.
(Butler-Kisbcr et al., 1992, p. 2).

The METRAC representative walked us through the process at early twilight and
helped the group to "make the familiar strange" and to raise questions about
the environment that had not consciously been addressed before. A summary of
the exercise was submitted to the Advisory Committee by the METRAC
representative and resulted in approval of a recommendation from the Dean of
Students to do a campus-wide audit. The Dean of Students delegated the work to
the Advisory Committee which formed a small subcommittee to complete the task.

Involving the University-at-large

The original involvement of the METRAC representative as an "outside expert,"
the Dean of Arts, and the Director of Physical Resources as well as approval
from the Dean of Students gave a legitimacy to the pilot effort and subsequent
campus-wide task. The next problem was how to retain ownership for the project
in order to "research the work from below, rather than from above" as Dagg and
Thompson (1988) would suggest and at the same time generate commitment for the
exercise from the University as a whole.

It was decided to approach the University through the Vice-Principal Academic
Dean's Working Group. Since McGill is fairly decentralized where faculties and
other such units enjoy relative autonomy, without a university-wide commitment
of some sort, there was the danger that even if the audit were implemented the
recommendations might never be realized.

The project was presented to this group as fundamental to the quality of all
academic life. The deans were asked to support it by appointing a delegate who
would then become part of an audit team that would survey the buildings and
surrounding areas of the faculty or unit for which each dean had
responsibility. In retrospect, the academic route carried momentum. The dean
who had participated in the pilot study helped to garner support. The deans
were reassured that their delegates would ensure a "faculty perspective" in the
process. At the same time it was a way of keeping the Deans informed about and
committed to the work. Similarly, the involvement of the Director of Physical
Resources made it easier to get custodial staff participation (which had direct
links to McGill security) and the funds to train the teams for the process. The
students on the audit subcommittee were given the task of finding sufficient
student volunteers to equip each of the subsequent 41 audit teams of 4, with 2
students, to ascertain gender balance and an equitable student-staff ratio.
This responsibility also gave them the opportunity to recruit feminist
participants.

Team formation and training

Lists of teams were drawn up and circulated to the Deans and their delegates,
and then all participants attended a 2 hour training session given by Connie
Guberman from METRAC who had already worked with other institutions on safety
audits. Again, the external expert provided weight and legitimacy to the
project. In addition to orienting the teams to the open-ended audit
questionnaire and the fundamental ideas underlying the exercise, this forum
helped to elicit and refute some of the sexist notions about women's safety
that certain participants brought with them. One of the key shifts in thinking
we were hoping to achieve was the understanding that issues on women's safety
include psychological safety. We were trying to increase the understanding that
women need to FEEL safe as well as be safe. Without this perception, low
incident statistics are only partially indicative of campus safety. During the
training sessions it was emphasized that the elaborated METRAC questionnaire
that was to be used in the audit was structured to encourage the elicitation of
feelings and perceptions as part of the data.

The audit process

At twilight on March 10, 1992, 41 teams met at their assigned buildings and for
approximately 2 hours audited the interiors and immediate exterior surroundings
of each. They were asked to keep copious notes using the audit questions as a
guide and then to integrate their information and submit this to the
subcommittee using two audit forms for an interior and exterior report. It took
until June of the same year to receive all the reports. The open-ended nature
of the survey, the large differences in audited areas and the composition of
the teams produced interesting formats and variation. The rich and
idiosyncratic qualitative data raised the usual issues that qualitative
inquirers face: how to present the information and how to counteract
questions concerning plausibility/validity.

The audit report

We grappled with how to retain the individual voices of the women which were so
descriptively documented in the audits in order to persuade the quantitative
scrutineers of the legitimacy of the process and results and to get the recom-
mendations implemented. To do this, each audit was reduced to a one-page,
individual summary of the area surveyed. These summary reports included
location, descriptions, functions, hours, observations, and notations as well
as the specific recommendations outlined in the report. All audit summaries
were included in the appendix of the final report. The inclusion of these
summaries in the report was perceived by a few University staff as overly
negative. However, the response from most, in particular the women of the
community, was extremely, positive. They were pleased that the nature and
details of their concerns had not been glossed over by generalities.

Maria Portela, the research assistant who helped with the data analysis, was a
graduate student studying architecture. Her expertise facilitated the task of
compiling all the information about dark and isolated areas and then displaying
this graphically on a map of the McGill campus. These data helped us to make
the case for developing a "night route" and to obtain immediate resources to
increase and concentrate safety and security measures along this route.

This Night Route Map outlines the optimal way of crossing the campus after dark
and includes where the new phones are located and other pertinent information.
Sightlines have been cleared, lighting has been enhanced, and security patrols
this route more frequently. The map is currently distributed to all new
students and as extensively as possible to all members of the university
community.

The open-ended questions and recommendations were grouped into common
categories, collapsed and expanded appropriately to encompass all the data, and
ultimately classified into 14 dimensions. Summary tables of the indoor and
outdoor audit recommendations were presented, indicating the frequency of the
various recommendations classified by category and priority. The most important
recommendations and comments were elaborated upon and interpreted further.
Thirteen recommendations came out of the report. These included the need for
improved signage and lighting, increased security, emergency communications and
incident reporting, and a coordinating committee reporting to a vice-principal
to ensure the recommendations would be implemented and that audits
would be done regularly.

Releasing the report became a delicate balancing act. The members of the
subcommittee responsible for the exercise all had to agree to the
recommendations and sign off. Meanwhile, a tragic event at a sister university
in which a professor shot four colleagues had suddenly put safety high on the
University's agenda. The Administration began pressing for the report in
mid-October 1992. Fortunately, a re- sponsive vice-principal was persuaded
that confidential access to a draft of the report could potentially undermine
the whole process, and he rescinded his request. The report was finally
released in early December. The report was released to the Administration, sent
to participants, and made public simultaneously. The university-wide
involvement, the methodology employed, and the distribution seemed to
contribute to the generally favorable response. A strong letter of com-
mendation to the subcommittee from the Principal of the Uni versity no doubt
contributed to the momentum of the next stage in the process.

Implementation

In January 1993, a Committee on the Personal Safety of Women in the University
was established, reporting to a senate committee chaired by a vice-principal.
It began the task of implementing the recommendations. This work is still
underway. To date, eight additional emergency phones of the most sophisticated
type have been added to the campus. Lighting has been increased in some key
areas, and mechanisms for reporting and replacing light outages and making
requests for improving sightline obstructions have been put in place. A third
patrol car has been added, and patrol frequency has been increased. A new
software package that will interface incident location with the McGill security
and Montreal police is being installed. The voluntary, student-run Walk-Safe
Network has been given some financial support and the University has agreed to
include the necessary expertise when adding or replacing signage. While the
work is by no means over, perhaps most rewarding has been that, increasingly,
up per level administrators and others are referring to women's psychological
safety.

Implications

The audit process is useful both for the concrete kinds of changes that can
result from it and the consciousness-raising it provides. However, there is no
doubt that the way the process is organized and implemented has a direct
bearing on the degree of commitment and subsequent results. Attention to a
process that engages and retains ownership for all constituents across an
institution has a direct bearing on the momentum and realization of results.

The notion of psychological safety should extend beyond the idea of
perceived physical safety and include any context in which women in some sense
do not feel safe or comfortable. The whole issue of sexual harassment is
naturally a part of this. But it also includes contexts which have been
referred to as hostile environments (Sandler & Paludi, 1993), places and
situations in which women are hindered or expend unnecessary energy because the
environment is either blatantly or subtly unsafe or uncomfortable. Encouraging
women to log these situations and events as bases for discussion and action is
both appropriate and necessary if changes are to be made.

We need to develop ways to "audit" contexts from the "bottom up" and to
extend these audits beyond the university and college level to the high schools
and elementary schools. Only recently have educators begun to realize just how
pertinent the notion of women's and girls' safety is to our schools and how
perhaps inadvertently, but overly accepting, we have been about what
constitutes admissible attitudes, behaviors, policies, and practices.

Copyright, 1995, The Women in Literature and Life Assembly (WILLA) of the
National Council of Teachers of English (ISSN # 1065-9080). Permission is given
to copy any article provided credit is given and the copies are not intended
for resale.